Tuesday - January 27, 2015

Transistor - Neoseeker's Game of the Year

In the past few weeks Lydia Sung and I have highlighted the ten nominees that Neoseeker's editorial team decided on for our Game of the Year award for 2014. Each spotlight felt like opening a door into who we are and what we believe in as critics in the video game industry. The nomination process itself is, and you might be surprised by this, a grueling and exhausting endeavor. Yet after the nominees are decided, a sense of serenity takes over. This is perfect. It really could not be any different.

Then we do the process all over with just ten nominees. Recently Lydia and I took to a voice call and recorded our deliberations as we ranked each of our nominees from ten up to number one. One game, having survived a gauntlet of direct comparisons to 2014's best and most amazing games, comes through at the end. One game that we feel best represents Neoseeker and ourselves. This is our example of what games should be -- need to be -- in 2014 and beyond.

That game is Transistor.

Lydia's written already on why Transistor belongs here and I certainly can't match that in another paragraph. All that needs to be said is that Transistor is a stunningly beautiful game, no matter which direction you look at it. There's purpose in every design decision, intent in every dotted "i". What is the Transistor? It's in the asking and answering of this question where Lydia and I fell in love with Supergiant Games' second title. With the way it grabbed onto us, there's really no letting go.

Transistor - 70+ Accolades & 600k Copies Sold

Not bad I say so keep up the good work guys, and here is a snippet from the post.

The launch of Transistor back in May of last year was a big deal for our small studio, as it was our next original game following the success of our first game, Bastion. Bastion's success exceeded our wildest fantasies by quite a bit -- it's sold more than 3 million copies to date, the majority of which happened many months after the game first came out on Xbox 360 and PC.

So, we were very happy to see Transistor selling even faster relative to Bastion during the first couple of months after its launch. With the new year upon us, we checked our spreadsheets, rubbed our eyes, checked our spreadsheets again and can now report that, thus far, Transistor has sold well over 600,000 copies between Steam and the PlayStation Store!

Word-of-mouth is what kept Bastion going for way, way longer than we could have imagined, and it's what's kept Transistor going strong, too. To that end, over the past few weeks Transistor has earned more than 70 industry accolades, including end-of-year awards and nominations for all sorts of different reasons you can read about below.

Friday - January 02, 2015

Transistor - CDMís 2014 Game of the Year

Everything in Transistor works so well. The plot has real emotion, and doesn’t relegate itself to tired stereotypes. It refuses to let you simply sit and enjoy, and instead expects you to put forth the effort to discover what narrative lies inside.

Wednesday - November 05, 2014

Transistor - Available Now on Mac & Linux

Transistor Out Now on Mac and Linux!

We're happy to announce Transistor is now available for Mac and Linux! We promised these versions of the game would be our next priority after our PlayStation 4 and PC launch back in May, and we're grateful to those who've been waiting for them.

Where to Get Transistor for Mac and Linux: If you have Transistor on Steam, you'll get access to these two new versions auto-magically (and for free!) as part of our latest and biggest update. Thank you again for all your support!

Further Updates! Transistor's minimum system requirements for Mac and Linux are listed on the Transistor page on Steam. Our thanks to Mr. Ethan Lee for all his help building these new versions of the game.

Sunday - August 31, 2014

Transistor - The Art of Transistor

I’ve played Bastion and I enjoyed it, but I had not taken a peek at Transistor yet. I knew I had to, even if it was only for the watercolor painted style that I had also love about Bastion. Even if you don’t like action RPG’s, you should really try Transistor, because the art style, the storyandthe music are amazing. I’m not going to go into all those things because we already have, I’m just here to show you how incredibly stunning this game looks.

All the scenes are a simple build up out of three layers; the background layer, central layer (where you run, shoot and experience everything), and the foreground layer. When running around the background and foreground layer move with you and add some life to the environment. Sometimes you come across a flock of white doves who fly up if you come near them. Together with the bright colors it makes for a festive eyesight.

Saturday - August 23, 2014

Transistor - A Gameplay Analysis

Transistor’s game design is impressive to say the least. Though elaborate, it is organized in a natural flow of events and difficultly, allowing the player to completely immerse themselves. And with that, I tip my hat to you, Supergiant Games. Transistor has been one of the most challenging, beautiful, and engaging games I have ever had the pleasure to play. My expectations weren’t just met, they were crushed to a pulp.

Transistor - Interview @ Popzara

Transistor clearly shares a heritage with Supergiant’s first game, Bastion. When the team was working on Transistor, did you make a conscious effort to differentiate the game from Bastion? What aspects of Bastion did you explicitly decide to carry over or drop?

GK: Our main goal with Transistor was to create a new game with its own distinct identity, as strong as that of our first game. Any similarities between Transistor and Bastion are mostly due to it being the same team that created both games, and a conscious decision on our part to continue exploring the action RPG genre. Other than that, we held over nothing from Bastion for the sake of doing so.

When we did come around to making similar decisions — things like the camera angle or the use of voiceover as a major component of the narrative — it was because we felt that those decisions were best for Transistor.

Upon Transistor’s PC launch there were a number of technical issues that hampered people’s ability to play the game. As an indie studio with perhaps less of a staff and budget for QA, how does Supergiant feel about this kind of problem and how do you approach it when it comes up?

GK: First off, if you personally ran into problems with the game at launch then I’m very sorry about that. I hope from your perspective that you felt like we addressed those problems swiftly.

For the small percentage of players who ran into compatibility issues or other problems around the time of the game’s launch, we responded often in a matter of minutes and worked closely with each individual to make sure they could get the game running. While there is no excuse for a rough launch in this day and age, if and when the reality of technical issues arises during a game’s launch, I think it is the developer’s responsibility to work swiftly to resolve those problems.

We invested heavily in the quality assurance of Transistor — much more so than we did or could on Bastion — both because we think it’s worth it and because we expected we might have a lot of folks trying to play the game on day one.

Fundamentally I think our approach was the right one: To test the game as thoroughly as possible on as many different systems as possible for as long as possible prior to launch, then to all be standing by for the launch to swiftly address any issues we did not or for whatever reason could not have anticipated.

Friday - June 06, 2014

Transistor - Editorial @ Save Continue

There’s something to be said about how Supergiant Games manages to push all the right buttons when it comes to games. 2011′s Bastion was a marvel in storytelling, with adaptive narration that engrossed you in its deceptively simple story about a young lad fighting against seemingly insurmountable odds, with Caelondia devastated and the Ura Army continuing their aggression after Caelondia’s calamitous mishap. Transistor, on the other hand, interweaves its agenda in both its story and gameplay, each of them parts of a greater whole.

We have sung heavily the praises of the game itself, as well as the divine soundtrack by the masterful Darren Korb, but there is something to be said of the hard work the development team had in piecing the story and aesthetic together.

Transistor is greater than it lets on. It’s not merely beautiful to look at or listen to, but it too carries with it a message of hope and futility and love and despair, all intertwining in some wicked dance. Through it all, Red is merely a player to this sick game that took more than just her voice. The silent songstress was quick to see her world deteriorate, first as her lover perishes defending her, then her home overtaken by this overwhelmingly blank menace, brought on by the very people who had the audacity to attack her in the first place. The Camerata, the Process, the Transistor itself—all sick pieces of a grander game.

Wednesday - June 04, 2014

Transistor - Review Roundup

Overall Transistor certainly shows how far Supergiant Games have come from Bastion - which was a great effort. Unfortunately, it’s missing some essential elements in an RPG (such as the aforementioned grinding) making a few bosses harder than they should be. Yet, as bad as those flaws may sound, I had a great time playing it thanks to the battle system, and the sheer charm of the characters. Chances are if you loved Bastion, you will enjoy Transistor just as much.

The game does eventually come to an end, and doesn’t explore the puzzle aspect as much as we were preferring, but Transistor still remains one of this year’s most refreshing experiences. Between the dazzling art style and the innovative gameplay system, there’s something here for everyone to experience.

To conclude, Transistor had me fixated on it from start to finish. In the long-standing debate of whether or not video games are art or not, Transistor is definitely a point in its favour. Of all games released this year, this is my favourite so far. I’m crossing my fingers that I’m lucky enough to play a better game before the year is up but I’d certainly love to give my game of the year recommendation to this game already.

Sunday - June 01, 2014

Transistor - Q&A @ Shacknews

.Creative Director Greg Kasavin was interviewed on Shacknews to answer a few questions from the sites members about his just released game Transistor.

What were your ideas and influences for creating the world of Transistor, and how did you expect players to feel when they begin to explore it?

Kasavin: It is difficult to pin down a specific set of influences, since there are so many from multiple media, and our influences are specific to each of the disciplines that form the game -- from the art and audio to the gameplay to the writing and so on. When beginning a project we tend to think a lot about the overall tone of the experience, what we want the feel of the game to be. In Transistor, we decided early on to pursue this idea of a vintage-futuristic setting, with what we called an 'operatic' tone for all that implies. I think we wanted players to experience the grandeur of the setting and the intensity of the personal stakes of the characters, while enjoying the mysteries of the gameplay -- having access to this all-powerful weapon with seemingly limitless capability. Broadly speaking, after having made this weird fantasy-frontier world in Bastion, we wanted to see what we could do in the science-fiction genre this time around.

What lessons did you take from Bastion's development and apply to the development of Transistor?

Kasavin: Although I would never downplay the effort that went into making Bastion, we were very fortunate to have a relatively smooth development process on that game, all things considered. Since the game ended up being both critically and commercially successful, it really validated our particular approach to game development, and we wanted to approach our second game from a similar mindset: Make something new that our team was excited about, playing to the strengths of the individuals on the team.

We did not approach Transistor from the perspective of trying to fix anything about Bastion. We were more interested in making a new game with its own distinct identity. As a result, nothing about Transistor was a foregone conclusion, and even when we arrived at similar decisions to ones we made on Bastion (such as the camera angle), it was because we felt it was right for this new game.

Saturday - May 31, 2014

Transistor - A Lesson in Style

by Couchpotato, 07:17

Gamemoir writer Jack Rooneyhas penned a new articlefor Transistor where he talks about why the game is a lesson for all other indie developers.

Transistor truly is a lesson in style to all other developers out there. Play through that game and tell me it didn’t feel personal, soulful, and stylish. I won’t believe you. Games like this need as much recognition as they can get so that other developers know that this is what many gamers are asking for. I can’t remember the last time an Assassin’s Creed game felt stylish, despite being well-polished and enjoyable. I can say with absolute certainty that Transistor is a title I will still think of years from now, the same way I think about Bastion, but I would be shocked if a AAA game comes out this year that I think about even a few months after its release. That is, unless it has style.

Tuesday - May 27, 2014

Transistor - Interview @ Destructoid

Destructoid has a new two part interview from last week with SuperGiant games.The first part of the Interview talks about crunch time, Bastion's success, and starting its second project Transistor.

Turning down a one-way alley towards SuperGiant's downtown San Francisco office space, I noticed the fenced parking lots on either corner decorated with two sorts of barbed wire. Three classical, no nonsense parallel strands were circumscribed by much more lively spirals of metal like a sharpened, stretched out slinky.

This is the coveted San Francisco startup space over two million Bastion sales led to. Atypical out of the gate success that the team doesn't take for granted. The move from the sleepy San Jose suburb that bore Bastion to an urban hotbed would, perhaps by coincidence, bear Transistor, SuperGiant's next project.

We sat down with Supergiant's Amir Rao (co-founder), Greg Kasavin (writer), Jen Zee (artist), and Darren Korb (composer) -- on Rao's dad's old, burgundy couch from the San Jose house -- after development on Transistor had wrapped, while the team was prepping it for launch.

Make sure to read Part I in this series. It deals with development crunch time, getting a game ready to launch, and the genesis of Transistor post Bastion. Now we're continuing the abrupt, jerky carnival ride through time and getting to the middle bits, to Transistor's design philosophy as it came together and the games that the people who made it love.

Transistor - Review @ RPGamer

While it would be hard to call Transistor disappointing, it's also impossible to say that it's as good as Supergiant Games' previous title. If the game had taken more time to explain its story, characters, and world, it probably would have been a more enjoyable experience. Luckily, the design of the combat system is a huge step up from Bastion's comparatively simple hack'n'slash battles, and the game's Recursion Mode — basically a new game plus — is designed in such a way that multiple playthroughs are required in order to see all the various functions and even to unlock all of the game's upgrade slots. A single playthrough will likely take most players roughly eight hours. It might not have matched up to their last game, but Transistor is still a great title that leaves me excited to see what the studio has planned next.

Transistor - Interview @ Max Level

Almost everyone I’ve spoken with about Transistor has started off by spewing admiration for the soundtrack. Did you ever imagine that it was going to be something this special?

DK: You know, it’s really hard to ever have any idea about whether or not anyone else is going to like something you’re working on. The early reactions to the music in the trailer released last year were overwhelmingly positive. The folks who played the game at PAX responded really well, so I was hopeful that people would like it. It seems so far that people really dig it, and it’s so great to hear that people are enjoying it and seem to be genuinely interested in it. That’s all you could ever ask for, really.

In a lot of ways, Transistor’s soundtrack follows the same unique pace as Bastion’s. You’ve said that you’re style could be defined as acoustic frontier trip-hop. How exactly did you come to conceptualize this style?

DK: I developed that style to really give cohesion to the Bastion soundtrack and try to define a genre for that game. I tried to do something different this time around, while at the same time retaining some of the eclecticness that Bastion provided. This time around I tried to include some more electronic elements, some more old-world european instruments, and a little note of post rock. I tried to use all those elements as my center for Transistor.

Thursday - May 22, 2014

Transistor - Soundtrack Free on Spotify

by Couchpotato, 01:07

I found the following news on PC Gamer for anyone interested in listening to the Soundtrack for free on Spotify. The only drawback is you need to register on the site.

Supergiant's first game, Bastion, drew much love for its space-cowboy score that fit perfectly with its fantasy world. The studio's sophomore work, Transistor, stages a gorgeous cyber reality accompanied by equally fitting electro-ambience from returning composer Darren Korb. And because Supergiant felt like being nice, the entirety of the game's music is up on Spotify for free listening.

Enjoy the artful approach to science-fiction, enjoy the hoops Supergiant's jumped through to position you in the right place to engage with its combat, and you can even enjoy the very fact that the game often struggles to get its deeper messages across.

Transistor may look like another pretty face favoring style over substance. It’s oozing with style and aesthetic charm, and it drew me into its weird and wonderful world immediately. But its beauty is outshined by combat deep enough to sink into for hours and hours. The game’s vision is intoxicating, and its execution is inspired.

Transistor - Interview @ VG 24/7

As Transistor is coming to PS4 and PC initially, I ask Kasavin about SuperGiant’s decision to forego publishers and fly solo throughout the project. He tells me that Warner Bros’ involvement with Bastion was primarily a pre-requisite to get the game past Microsoft’s Xbox Live certification process, but now that several barriers have been lifted on consoles, the team decided to stay entirely self-sufficient this time around.

“Self-publishing felt like a logical next step,” he states, “as digital publishing has evolved to some extent in the last several years to make it easier for smaller teams like ours to get their games onto different platforms. At this point we have a good-sized following of fans interested in what we’re up to, and we love talking to the gaming press directly. And above all, we love our independence, being able to control and be responsible for every aspect of the games we make. We’ll see how the rest of this process goes for us, though thus far we’ve enjoyed it.”

The OST includes an exclusive bonus track, “Signals”, created especially for this release. We will have the OST available digitally on May 20, and the physical CD will ship soon after. If you preorder the disc, you will get the digital download immediately as of May 20.

Sunday - May 04, 2014

Transistor - Interview @ Gamasutra

It's been 3 years since Supergiant Games released Bastion in the summer of 2011 to remarkable critical and commercial success.

The indie studio's debut title went on to sell over two million copies across all platforms, and Supergiant's Greg Kasavin tells me its success was both unexpected and affirming. It validated the team's decision to quit their various jobs in AAA development and essentially lock themselves in a house to work on something they were passionate about.

It also set a high bar for Transistor, the follow-up to Bastion that Supergiant is releasing later this month.

"Nobody knew who we were and we had nothing to lose. If no one liked [Bastion] it would have just come and gone," says Kasavin. "There are a lot of people with high expectations of us this time."

Saturday - April 26, 2014

Transistor - Interview @ Games Abyss

by Couchpotato, 04:36

Games Abyss has posted another interview form PAX East this time with Creative head of Supergiant Games Greg Kasavin, and ask a few question about Transistor.

At last year's PAX East I had the pleasure of playing the first public build of Transistor, the next game in the repertoire of the studio that brought us Bastion. Creative head of Supergiant Games Greg Kasavin spoke with us about the game then, and this year we bring you a show floor interview with the man himself to talk about what's new in the build and even more importantly, when the game will officially drop. We were so excited that it was playable once again this year but we were even more stoked that we only have to wait until May 20th.

Monday - April 21, 2014

Transistor - Interview @ Dual Shockers

PAX East 2014 featured plenty of heavy hitters and big upcoming games, with titles like Evolve, Watch Dogs, and The Evil Within present to show off plenty of what the new generation of consoles has to offer.

However, one of the big focuses of PAX East is the thriving indie community both in and outside of Boston, and on the top of this year’s Indie Megabooth was Supergiant Games showing off their upcoming title for PC and PS4, Transistor. Releasing three years after the studio made an impressive debut with their first title, Bastion, DualShockers took a peek at the title with a demo of Transistor, and spoke straight from the show floor with Supergiant Games’ Creative Director, Greg Kasavin, about what to expect from their next effort.

Sunday - April 20, 2014

Transistor - Hands-On Preview @ Dual Shockers

Coming off the high anticipation from Bastion, fans of Supergiant Games can rest easy knowing that even from just a brief excursion through the world of Transistor, I already can’t wait to take a more extended trip. Coming off the demo from this weekend’s PAX East 2014, the game already shows exceptional polish, style, combat, and most of all, dedication to new ideas and a world that’s just waiting to be explored through the eyes of Red. Luckily, with the game officially set to release on May 20th, it won’t be too much longer for us to wait until we can hop back into Transistor‘s tech-infused world with Red – and the wait will be worth every second.

Friday - April 11, 2014

Transistor - Release Date Announced

Transistor arrives May 20 on PS4 and PC

Mark your calendar for May 20, 2014. In just a few weeks, our next game will be available for the PlayStation 4 and PC!

We’ve been putting the finishing touches on it and think it’s just about ready.

This week at PAX East in Boston, several of us from Supergiant will be taking a short break from development to show you some of our latest progress. We’ll have a near-final build of the game running on the PlayStation 4, which you’ll be able to get your hands on at our booth 892. It was one year ago at PAX East that we showed Transistor for the first time!

We’ll have more details about Transistor in the days leading up to our launch next month. Until then, here are some quick facts we wanted to share, and stay tuned for more:

When is Transistor due out? Transistor’s release date is May 20, 2014.

What platforms is Transistor coming to? PlayStation 4 and PC.

Where will I be able to get the game? On PSN for the PlayStation 4 version, and on Steam or our web site for the PC version.

How much is the game? Transistor will be sold for $19.99 in North America, and €18.99 / £14.99 in Europe.

Will Transistor be available in my country? We plan for a worldwide launch. Transistor includes English voiceover and text in English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, and Brazilian Portuguese.

Can I preorder the game? Not at this time though we’re looking into it!

Friday - March 07, 2014

Transistor - Interview @ Paste Magazine

Steve Gaynor, Amir Rao and Greg Kasavin share similar backstories. All three worked on big budget games for massive publishers—Gaynor on Bioshock 2 for 2K, Rao and Kasavin on Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 for Electronic Arts—before opening their own small studios. Rao cofounded Supergiant Games, where he was later joined by Kasavin. Supergiant’s first release, Bastion, was a critical and commercial hit, and topped Paste’s list of the best games of 2011. Gaynor is a cofounder of the Fullbright Company, whose first game Gone Home was named by Paste as the best game of 2013. Both games seamlessly weave well-written, emotionally powerful narratives into traditional game structures.

Gaynor recently talked to Rao and Kasavin about Bastion and Supergiant’s upcoming game Transistor for the Tone Control podcast. In this excerpt the three designers talk about the early days of their studios and the significance of design documents.

Sunday - February 23, 2014

Transistor - Interview @ GameInformer

Game Informer interviews Greg Kasavin the Creative Director of Supergiant Games about his upcoming ARPG Transistor.

Supergiant has been pretty quiet about Transistor for the last few months. Has anything notable changed from what gamers have seen so far?

After the fantastic response we got to our reveal of Transistor last year, we knew we just had to stay focused and make sure the full game lived up to the potential people saw in it, or better yet experienced from playing it. That's essentially what we've been doing.

I think a lot of people have already made up their minds about whether or not they want to play Transistor just from what little we've revealed thus far. Likewise I don't think we'll tip many people over the fence by revealing more weapons or characters or whatever. So we just keep on tinkering away at the game.

The big thing that's happened since last we publicly showed Transistor is we now have the whole game playable start to finish, with a complete story and all the environments and content we expect will be in the full game. We've also fleshed out all the core systems for mixing and matching different Transistor functions. That means from here on out we're just making all of it better. Hopefully, at least! And we're pretty happy with a lot of it already.

As a game developer, if you're busy building levels and other content then that's time you could have spent improving what you already had. So, even though this is an intense point in development, I've been feeling very good about where we're at since with each passing day I'm seeing more and more of the promise of this concept becoming fulfilled, and seeing so many small details, the little things we really want to do with it, happening more and more.

Saturday - January 11, 2014

Transistor - Interview @ OnlySP

With the game virtually playable from start to finish and only tweaking and polishing left to go, Kasavin said Transistor is well on its way to making the “early 2014” release date the game has been shooting for. The game’s scale is also becoming a little clearer as it’s being finished. As Bastion did, Transistor includes side content that players can choose to explore, and this optional content can make pinning down a game length tricky. Kasavin did estimate, though, that Transistor’s scale was in the ballpark of what players got out of Bastion.

Thursday - December 26, 2013

Transistor - Happy Holidays from Supergiant

by Couchpotato, 06:07

Supergiant wishes everyone a happy holidays, and gives a update for Transistor.

Right now Transistor is in an alpha state where just about all of the content, systems, and features we have in mind are implemented in some fashion, and the game is playable from beginning to end. It’s where we wanted to be as we head into 2014.

In the coming weeks, we plan to keep testing, tuning, and iterating on every aspect of the game until we think it’s ready to put out there for you to play. We’ll talk more specifics as we get closer to that time. Until then, you can always check in with us on Twitter or Facebook. Stay tuned, happy holidays, and keep in touch!

Transistor - Interview @ GamingBolt

GamingBolt: Transistor is Supergiant Games’ first title since Bastion released in 2011. How did you decide upon the concept and why did it take so long to bring a new game out?

Greg Kasavin: Bastion originally came out for Xbox LIVE Arcade and PC shortly after in the summer of 2011, and thankfully it got a really good reception. As a result it kept us pretty busy for over a year after its first release, as we continued supporting it and bringing it to new platforms from Linux to iOS. At the same time we were starting preproduction on Transistor, first just by getting a lot of seemingly disconnected ideas from everyone on team onto a page then seeing what common ground there was.

After creating this weird fantasy world for Bastion we were interested to see what we could do in a science fiction setting this time around, and we also had a lot of ideas about trying to synthesize the feel of turn-based and tactical games in an action RPG context. It of course took a while for these ideas to take shape, and we also didn’t want to reveal the game before we felt it was in a solid playable state for the public.

GamingBolt: The game will be a turn-based strategy title but with free movement in real time, in which the player will plan out actions and then dodge enemies to refill the action meter. Given that Bastion was real-time with its combat, what was the reason for switching over to something more methodical?

Greg Kasavin: We consider Transistor an action RPG, with a deeply integrated strategic planning mode that’s core to the moment-to-moment play. We were interested in developing a deep and open-ended combat system for this game that created a lot of opportunities for expressive play and for dramatic tension. So, by giving players the ability to stop the world around them at almost any time and plan their next set of moves, we found that players became more invested in the outcomes of their tactical decisions, and enjoyed some of the surprises there as well.

Thursday - September 19, 2013

Transistor - Preview @ Warpzoned

Transistor is an incredibly elegant cyberpunk noir game – it’s so beautiful that it’s almost like cyberpunk nouveau. The gameplay is smooth, and everything from the music, to the backdrops, to the story, are all haunting. When Transistor speaks to Red, the top of the PS4 controller lights up in time with his voice, which was both startling and stunning in the small, dark alcove Supergiant had set up for press to play the demo. With the headphones on, I suddenly felt completely separated from the tens of thousands of people at PAX – it was just me, Transistor, and Red, fighting the Jerks and looking for vengeance. There was nothing quite like the intimate tension I experienced there, and I can’t wait until I can recreate that it in my own living room.

Wednesday - September 18, 2013

Transistor - Interview @ Gameranx

One thing I love about the combat is that it varies so much depending on the player. If someone wants to make it a hack-and-slash they can, but there is also a heavy strategic element to it. Would it possible to go through the game without using the time-pause ability?

Greg: Yeah, that’s kind of the idea. Whether you’ll be able to avoid it entirely, I don’t know. The idea is that we want you to be compelled to use it on your own terms so we aren’t going to force it on you. We want the real-time combat to be fun and viable; having this really powerful ability opens up this opportunity for us in terms of designing combat and encounters with enemies, stuff like that. To make them really intense because you always have this option to say ‘No, no, no, wait. Time out. Now I’m going to turn the tables on these guys. I’m going to take these guys out, do that..’ and we find out that players use it in very different ways—that’s when we felt that we were really onto something. Not everyone was just using it every single time, because we didn’t want to make just a straight-up turn based game, because of the things we wanted to do with the narrative and our desire to make an immediate-feeling game. We wanted to capture some of the sensation of turn-based games and the drama of contemplating your next move and the anticipation of pressing the go-button and seeing whether the plan is going to happen or whether it is going to screw up. Those are fun moments for us.

In the end, what do you want players to take away from playing Transistor?

I mean, I would be very happy if it were received similar to the way Bastion was received. We have been just overwhelmed with the response to Bastion and it’s the reason we can be here again making a game on our own terms. With Bastion we wanted to make a game that would leave a lasting and positive impression on people, and be more than just fun to play, but leave people with something. We like games that do that, and we want to see if we can do it again. Hopefully we can surprise people along the way once more.

And then the burning question everyone has been asking you…. When and on what can we expect to see Transistor?

Saturday - September 07, 2013

Transistor - Previews

Between the narration, stunning art direction, haunting soundtrack, Transistor is shaping up to be an atmospheric masterpiece. It has to be seen and heard. Only significant time with the game will tell whether or not the combat and customization options go as deep as the aesthetics, but from what I saw at PAX Prime I can give Supergiant Games my vote of confidence in that regard. Transistor launches sometime in 2014 on PC and PS4, and I for one cannot wait.

The first thing I noticed after booting up the game and grabbing a hold of the Transistor was the hypnotically beautiful music and gorgeous environments. Transistor oozed charm from the moment I moved Red around the map, absorbing the entrancing art and haunting vocal track playing in the background. After getting my bearings, I moved on, following the instruction of my talking sword. It wasn’t long before I encountered my first enemy